


how it was and how it will be

by Sendnukes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, Memories, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 04:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15307269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sendnukes/pseuds/Sendnukes
Summary: “Yeah,” he says, voice rough, “Yeah, Buck was my best friend. He was everything.”And maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the right word. Everything.





	how it was and how it will be

_“It could have been so beautiful—you scout out the road ahead and I will watch your back, how it was and how it will be, memory and fantasy.”    -Richard Siken_

 

“So, uh,” Sam has his counselor voice on and Steve mentally braces himself, “that . . . guy was your best friend?”

 

Steve smiles brittlely, feels it threaten to crack his face. _Best friend._  Too simple to describe what he and Bucky had been but not wrong. Steve had never been able to find the words to describe he and Bucky, had hoped one day there would be a word that felt right, that encompassed the breadth of what they were. In the end, he had never found one.

 

He knows he could lie to Sam, and Sam would believe him, nod his head understandingly. But it seems an injustice to Bucky, and here, in the twenty-first century, it’s the first time Steve will ever be able to admit who they were to another person.

 

“Yeah,” he says, voice rough, “Yeah, Buck was my best friend. He was everything.”

 

And maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the right word. _Everything._

 

It takes a moment for Sam to catch up but when he does, his eyes widen infinitesimally.

 

“Oh,” he says, “ _Oh_.”

 

Steve watches him with some apprehension, tells himself this isn’t his time anymore, most people are accepting of the things he had to keep tucked close to him and secret before he woke up. Sure enough, Sam’s face smooths and he gives Steve an encouraging smile.

 

“Tell me about him? About you two?”

 

Steve’s throat constricts. “I don’t know if I can.”

 

Sam smiles again but it’s laced with sadness now too, Steve can see it in his eyes.

 

“Yeah, it’s hard, but it’ll make you feel better. Like cleaning a wound.”

 

Steve knows wounds, knows the pain, and it’s nothing to this ache of remembrance that lives in his teeth, in his fingertips, in the very marrow of his bones.

 

He takes a deep breath.

 

\- -

 

Steve remembers the summer of 1938 with war looming on the horizon, but living with the windows flung open, the faded white curtains billowing out. Neither of them wanted to do anything that summer, the air weighing down and pressing them to the couch, the balcony, the narrow bed. That summer they lived in their boxers, with cool washcloths against their foreheads. That was the summer they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, fingertips scorching across skin, too hot to touch but impossible not to.

 

He remembered everything, and even if he hadn’t, there were three or four sketchpads hidden away somewhere that would preserve that summer until they crumbled to dust. But Steve remembered. A hundred intimacies; the distant blare of a radio in the street, the cut of Bucky’s hips, his dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, the stickiness of their damp skin moving against each other, Bucky curled up on the fire escape with a cigarette clamped between his lips, the sultry nights with heat lightning splitting the sky in silence, and, always, the hazy yellow sunlight flooding everything.

 

He remembered the double bed, recalled the image of Bucky fast asleep in the mornings, more beautiful than anything in Steve’s life, lying next to him, fingering the knobs of his spine like a rosary. He remembered strong coffee in the morning on the fire escape, barefoot and bleary eyed, and he remembered dinners eaten in exhausted silence, Bucky smiling across the table. He remembered midnights sprawled across the bed, Bucky’s hand over his mouth  - _quiet, Steve, baby, somebody’s gonna hear you_ \- and he remembered the arguments, Bucky’s eyes flashing in anger - _I heard you coughing earlier, call in to work, can’t help nobody if you’re goddamn dead, Steve_ , _no I haven’t been fuckin’ drinkin’._

 

To have been there, to have loved him; as if that alone could have kept him alive. As if they could have existed for eternity between those four walls of Eden.

 

He remembered and ached with it all. It had been beautiful then; deeply painful now in that sad sweet way that times gone and lost are.

 

\- -

 

“You and Barnes were . . . intimate?” Sam asks delicately.

 

Steve dislikes the word, too clinical for what they had been and done, but he nods anyways.

 

“He was the first person I was ever with. And the last.”

 

Sam raises an eyebrow. “And the only one?”

 

Steve hesitates. Shakes his head.

 

“No.”

 

 - -

 

Peggy was, well she just was. Whip-smart and exceedingly competent, beautiful and kind. The world stopped a little for Steve whenever she was in the room.

 

Being with her was different than being with Bucky, for many reasons besides the obvious. Before the serum, before Captain America, back in that cramped apartment in Brooklyn, Bucky had been able to cover Steve with his body, held him tight while he rocked into him, always so careful not to hurt him, to never leave bruises. After, Bucky had still touched him like he was something precious still liable to shatter under his hands, but looked at him with something like awe, like manna from heaven.

 

Peggy was soft, though, where Bucky was all hard lines, her breasts fitting perfectly in Steve’s hands, her soft whispers so very different from Bucky’s throaty groans. She was small and fragile under Steve in a way Bucky never would be.

 

And Peggy was light in a way that Bucky wasn’t, not since Zola’s laboratory. It was never better, only different. But it was easier. They didn’t have to hide, there were no hands pressed over mouths or clandestine hotel rooms. With Peggy, Steve could imagine a future, one with children and a sweet little house somewhere, family meals and vacations. With Bucky, there was only uncertainty and the knowledge that there were some things Bucky would never be able to give him.

 

And still, Steve felt as though he could remember every time with Bucky. In the darkness of winter when the flat was freezing but Bucky was so warm; in the summer, lazy and slow; in the nameless forests of Europe. He remembered Bucky’s voice, low and hot in his ear, his large hands wrapped around Steve’s sharp hip bones, that burning look in his eyes when he was inside Steve. He could recall the arch of Bucky’s back when he came, the exact way his eyes closed and his mouth opened as if he was receiving sacrament. The shudder that ran through his whole body and the soft little noises he made. All if it was etched into Steve’s memory, deeper and closer than his own blood.

 

 - -

 

“So what,” Sam asks, looking incredulous, “You were sleeping with both of them?”

 

“No!” Steve protests, “It wasn’t like that.”

 

“No?" Sam asks, cocking an eyebrow, "Then what was it like?"

 

\- - 

 

These memories are darker, not the diaphanous ones of Brooklyn. The low, pained sound that tore from Bucky’s throat, the betrayal written across his face that hit Steve like a slap across his.

 

 _I can’t do this anymore, Buck. It’s not fair to Peggy_ _or to you._

 

Bucky’s anger, terrible and grief-stricken.

 

_Fuck you, Rogers._

 

The way his face had crumpled then, eyes gone bright and glassy with pain. The way Steve had yearned to pull Bucky to him, to apologize and take it back, swear he would never choose someone over Bucky, the way he had promised so many times before. What happened to the end of the line?

 

It never started feeling right.

 

\- -

 

“Jesus, this is some _Lifetime_ shit, man,” Sam says, shaking his head.

 

Steve doesn’t get the reference, but he’s not in the mood to be educated on the twenty-first century at the moment.

 

“If it didn’t feel right, why did you do it?”

 

Steve doesn’t have to think about the answer; he’s known the reason why from the second he made up his mind.

 

“Because I was scared.”

 

Sam snorts. “Captain America was scared?”

 

“It was a different time, Sam. And more than that, I was scared of loving him too much. I couldn’t imagine a happy ending for us.”

 

Sam eyes are kind and sad when he speaks.

 

“You ever let him know you regretted it?”

 

Steve isn’t surprised anymore that Sam can read between the lines enough to know how Steve really felt all those years ago, but he still rolls the word _regret_ around in his mouth, as if tasting it.

 

“Yes.”

 

\- -

 

Steve had half expected Bucky to request a transfer to a different unit, but he should have known he would never ditch his men. They were Steve’s men by loyalty and rank but Bucky’s by devotion. Steve knew they would follow him into any trench, any foxhole, but he also knew they would follow Bucky into the very jaws of hell.

 

The first few days back with the unit, traipsing through some Eastern European country, were some of the worst in Steve’s life. Having Bucky so close again but unable to touch him, and, worse, the way Bucky refused to even look at Steve and the pain, white-hot, when he did.

 

At night, Steve lay awake, guilt, poisonous and seductive, echoing in his ears like a liturgy. In the firelight, Steve could see Bucky’s eyes, open and far away.

 

_If you live according to the flesh, you will die._

 

But Bucky had always been the cathedral and the temple. The beginning and the end. The wine and the confession.

 

All Steve could do was return to the altar on his knees and beg for absolution.

 

\- -

 

“You went back to him.”

 

It isn’t a question, and there’s no judgement in Sam’s voice - there never is - but Steve feels the need to defend himself all the same.

 

“I loved Peggy, but -”

 

“But not the way you loved him,” Sam finishes,

 

“There’s nobody-” Steve feels his throat constrict again, shakes his head in frustration, “It’s only ever been Bucky for me. It will only ever be him.”

 

“Don’t leave me hanging, man; did he take you back?”

 

\- -

 

Steve had woken slowly, the way one does when they aren’t sure what woke them. In the dying firelight, he could see the dark masses of the others but not the most familiar. Casting about, his gaze had found Bucky outside the soft glow of the fire, back to a tree, head in his hands. It was his soft sobbing that had woken Steve.

 

Silent and careful not to rouse the others, he made his way to Bucky’s side, crouched down next to him. Bucky stilled and quieted but did not raise his head. They stayed that way for a long while, the only sounds the stirring of the embers and the distant call of an owl.

 

“Are you happy?” Bucky finally asked in a broken voice, no bitterness, no anger, just defeat, “With her?”

 

“Yes,” Steve had answered honestly because he couldn’t not, “But I was happy with you too, Bucky. Happier than I’ve ever been.”

 

“Then, why?” Bucky asked, and he lifted his head, met Steve’s eyes definitely despite the tears streaked across his face.

 

Steve stared into the darkness, tried to remember why.

 

“You and I, we could never have been enough. We would have to hide, forever, Buck.”

 

There had been anger in Bucky’s eyes again, in the tightening of his jaw.

 

“It was enough for me. It was always enough.”

 

“It wouldn’t have been fair to you,” Steve whispered.

 

“That Steve Rogers or Captain America speaking?” Bucky spat the title, “Cause the Steve I know never backed down from anything.”

 

“But I am Captain America, Bucky,” Steve said gently.

 

“Then what would Steve Rogers, that little guy from Brooklyn?  the one I fell in love with, remember him? What would he say?”

 

Steve stared at him, knew it was all falling down.

 

“He would say,” he swallowed, “that he’ll never love anyone as much as you. That you were the strongest and truest thing for him, always. That whatever happens, the time you two spent together was the greatest thing of his life.”

 

Bucky had began crying again, silent tears gathered in his eyes and rolled down. Tentatively, Steve reached out to thumb them away. Bucky’s skin was hot under his touch, singing his fingertips. It only took a twitch of his fingers to draw a line down to Bucky’s mouth where it was stained with salt.

 

“Steve.”

 

His name on Bucky’s tongue was a plea and he had been helpless. He moved to draw his hand back but Bucky grabbed his wrist, and Steve had let Bucky pull him closer until he could see the dampness of his eyelashes, the light freckles across his cheeks, could smell him, all leather and gunpowder, and, if he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend they were back in the sun-drenched Brooklyn flat.

 

Bucky’s lips were soft in a way they never were under Steve’s, and he licked the tears off them, tried to pull the sadness from Bucky’s mouth, tried to swallow the dirt in his own. Steve knew there was no salvation in the way their bodies moved together and no god to answer for it. And yet, this holiness was no sin, he understood that now.

 

Once more into the Garden.

 

\- -

 

“So you had breakup sex,” Sam says incredulously, “I mean, very dramatic, sad, middle-of-World-War-Two breakup sex, but still.”

 

Steve shrugs. “I guess so.”

 

“Not very puritanical of you. How’d Peggy feel about it?”

 

Steve wishes they had never started this conversation.

 

“I never told her.”

 

Sam gives a long whistle. “ _Damn._  This would ruin so many people’s vision of Captain America.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Did you ever regret it?” Sam asks gently.

 

“I never regretted a moment I spent with him. I regret that I did that to Peggy, and I regret that it made everything harder for Buck and I, but I will never regret going back to him.”

 

Sam nods as if he understands, which Steve highly doubts.

 

“What happened after that?”

 

\- -

 

For a moment, Steve existed in the place between sleep and wakefulness. He could feel Bucky pressed against him, Steve’s arms around him, holding him close in a way he could never have done before. He had fought off the consciousness that threatened to shatter the moment, nuzzled instead at Bucky’s neck, pressed kisses to the exposed skin. There, like that, Steve thought he could die happy. Really and truly. Or maybe, he had wondered, maybe he was dead, and this was paradise.

 

But reality reared its ugly head, and the world had come rushing back. When Steve opened his eyes, it was early enough that the light was still gray, and he could see that the others were still asleep around a campfire long gone to ash. He and Bucky were a couple yards away, tucked behind a tree in some semblance of privacy.

 

Steve had glanced down, his breath caught at the sight of Bucky. He looked younger than he had in ages, face smooth and seraphic in sleep. He was so devastatingly beautiful that all Steve could do was ache and stare. That time, he took nothing for granted. He memorized every line and shadow of Bucky’s face, committed it to memory, knew that he must. When he trailed his fingers over the landscape of Bucky’s body, the ridges and valleys that he knew best, he did it in the hope that it became a muscle-memory. And when Bucky woke with Steve’s fingers wrapped around him, he watched every blissful contortion of Bucky’s face, held the soft cry Bucky made when he came, loose-limbed and docile, close to him.

 

“I love you,” he whispered into the soft hairs at Bucky’s neck, “I will love you forever.”

 

\- -

 

“Jesus, man,” Sam sounds choked up, “This is too fucking sad.”

 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Steve says quickly, half-hoping that Sam will agree, the other half of him stuck in the compulsion to talk about it, about what happened.

 

“Hell no, you’ve got to finish now.”

 

“Story’s almost over anyways,” Steve sighs, “Bucky fell from that train a week later.”

 

\- -

 

That night, that campsite like the Garden of Gethsemane.

 

Steve has a million memories of Bucky, but that night, the last night, plays over and over in his head. He can see it all; Bucky’s head tipped back in laughter, the firelight casting him in deep oranges and reds, how astonishingly beautiful he was. How happy. The stolen kisses in the woods, disguised as collecting more firewood. Pressing Bucky up against a tree and bringing him apart under Steve’s hands, his soft panting cries, hands scrabbling at Steve’s back. Bucky’s hands on him, touching him the way only Bucky knew how, pressing his mouth to Bucky’s neck to keep quiet. Doing it again an hour later. Falling asleep wrapped together and waking in the dark to blindly touch and gasp against each other’s mouths. Fever and rapture, on his knees worshiping. Steve knows he would know Bucky’s body by touch alone now, knows every dip and curve and hollow.

 

In memory, Steve almost remembers waking that morning with a hollowness in his stomach, the taste of rot on his tongue. In truth, he knows he woke holding Bucky tightly to him, not aware it would be the last time, but still knowing that what was beneath his hands was the most precious thing in the world, what he would die for a hundred times over.

 

It’s almost enough.

 

That afternoon, with Bucky hurtling towards the Danube, Steve knew the true meaning of ruin.

 

_Oh death, where is your victory?_

 

\- -

 

Sam’s head is bowed by the end. They sit silently for a moment.

 

“Steve,” Sam says, startling slightly, “you’re a really strong, guy, you know that? Not just physically, either. To go through that and still be standing and fighting? That’s almost as impressive as the size of your biceps.”

 

Steve cracks a small smile at that.

 

“Didn’t have a choice. Bucky wouldn’t have wanted me to just lie down and die. Anyways, I had to get those bastards back for taking him from me.”

 

“Well, you succeeded.”

 

They’re silent again for some time, both lost in thought.

 

“It must have been one hell of a shock seeing him on that highway.”

 

Steve snorts. “You’ve got no idea.”

 

\- - 

 

Nothing would have prepared Steve for the Winter Soldier to stare back at him with Bucky’s eyes. Never again would the world tilt so violently on its axis. Never again would Steve feel such a mercurial flood of emotions at once; horror, confusion, fear, sorrow, joy, overwhelming, crippling joy.

 

The face he never thought he would see again; the same slope of his nose, the full lips, the severe line of his jaw. Bucky, his Bucky, staring him down, a revenant, a ghost, a miracle risen from the dead.

 

\- -

 

“Not much to say about it that you couldn’t guess,” Steve says, “Shook me up pretty bad.”

 

“That’s to be expected when your dead lover turns out to be a psychotic Soviet assassin,” Sam mutters.

 

“Thanks,” Steve replies dryly.

 

“He doesn’t remember you? Like at all?”

 

Steve tries not to flinch.

 

“No.”

 

There had been no recognition in the Winter Soldier’s eyes. No flicker of remembrance, no indication that he remembered being Bucky, remembered living a life together.

 

“But, I think,” Steve says, “if I could just _speak_ to him, I could make him remember. I could tell him about us.”

 

\- -

 

They’re twenty years old and in love. Steve knows he will feel this way forever, knows he will look at Bucky like he hangs the moon every night forever. He knows it in his bones, in his blood, in the deepest part of himself. They’re twenty years old and they’re going to live forever.

 

Bucky’s out on the fire escape, one hand wrapped around a coffee mug, the other holding a lit cigarette, the blue smoke curling into the dawn. His head is turned to watch the paperboy biking by and only his profile is visible, softened by the early-morning glow. His hair is mussed from sleep, he needs a shave, and his shirt has a hole in the armpit. He’s the most beautiful thing Steve has ever seen. He can’t draw him enough, can never capture that ineffable quality that makes Steve want to drop to his knees and tell Bucky every single thing he’s ever thought about him. How he’s loved him for years. How he knows he’ll never be able to stop. How he’ll love him in every space between heartbeats, in every lifetime, and after, when they’re dead and gone, he’ll still love him.

 

Bucky turns and meets Steve’s eyes, lips curling in a small smile, eyes still hazy with sleep. The moment hangs there, dappled sunlight and Brooklyn below them like some urban oasis, no money and even less food in the cupboards, they hate their jobs and Steve can feel himself getting sick again. They’re twenty and the happiest they’ve ever been.

 

They’re twenty-six in the trenches of hell, shells whizzing over head and exploding hard enough to shake the earth. There’s dead men all around them, the smell of rot and shit and decay will never wash out, Steve thinks, if they make it out alive. They’re twenty-six and looking up into the face of eternity with submachine guns in their shaking hands.

 

Bucky is battered and filthy, his eyes cold and his jaw set. Steve damns every single person responsible for Bucky ending up in this trench. Some nights when they’ve the smallest respite, Steve tangles his fingers with Bucky’s in the dirt and whispers all his love into his ear until that glassy look fades from Bucky’s eyes.

 

They’re a hundred years old and facing each other on a highway, standing across from each other in a way they were never meant to. Bucky is deadly and terrifying, his mind and body changed, his eyes flat and blank in a way that scares Steve more than anything. They’re a hundred years old and still on this earth together.

 

Every single thing around Steve is different; New York doesn’t feel like New York and it’s all too loud and fast. And yet, somehow, Bucky is standing across from him and even though he’s trying to kill him, Steve wants to shout promises to him.

 

_I'll bring you home, Bucky. I swear it. 'till the end of the line._

 

This time, Steve isn’t scared.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to be as historically and canonically correct as possible so please let me know if you find any errors!


End file.
